


Fate

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Backstory, Captivity, Desperation, F/M, Implied/Referenced Incest, Isolation, POV Female Character, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-24
Updated: 2007-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-22 18:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/916861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the monster's castle, the princess counts her heartbeats, stringing them together into hours and days. Background Kanan/Gonou.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fate

**Author's Note:**

> Another character study I wrote while working on "Samsara."

In the monster's castle, the princess counts her heartbeats, stringing them together into hours and days. She looks back on her life and wonders where she stepped onto the path that led to this place, wonders how she could have changed the story.

What if her brother had come home early that day? What if she'd been more suspicious of the knock on the door (they never had visitors, never) and had hidden in the forest? What if she'd been a heartbeat faster any time the monster left himself open for a second and she tried to kill him?

She goes back further.

What if the nuns hadn't thrown her and her brother out? What if she'd found a job in one of the other towns (the sleazy barkeep wasn't all _that_ sleazy, whatever her brother thought) so her brother could study for the national exams and win an official appointment? What if they'd stayed in that abandoned farmhouse and done their best to be self-sufficient?

And further.

What if the nuns hadn't pulled them apart when they were children? What if they'd grown up together, without the scars of that enforced separation? What if (the most impossible dream of all) their parents hadn't died?

But it's meaningless. You can choose how to live your life, but karma is a lead weight on the weave of the world. Sooner or later fate catches up to everyone; the only question is what path you take to meet it.

She and her brother are two halves of a whole, whether they become lovers or not. Sooner or later the monster's soldiers come by -- this monster, another monster, any monster will do -- and two unarmed humans can't fight a troop of youkai. She ends up in the castle, alone, slowly going mad. The only variable is whether her brother dies trying to protect her or trying to rescue her. This story has no happy end.

Her brother is coming for her.

She will kill herself rather than watch him die.


End file.
